Oblique-incidence, arbitrary-profile wave injection for electromagnetic simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a parallel numerical method for accurately injecting arbitrary-profile electromagnetic waves at boundaries in simulations, especially when the wave profile is known at a different plane, enhancing simulation flexibility.

Contribution

It presents a novel parallel technique for propagating wave profiles between arbitrary tilted planes and simulation boundaries in electromagnetic codes.

Findings

Enables accurate wave injection for non-paraxial beams.

Implemented in the Smilei particle-in-cell code.

Improves flexibility in electromagnetic simulation setups.

Abstract

In an electromagnetic code, a wave can be injected in the simulation domain by prescribing an oscillating field profile at the domain boundary. The process is straightforward when the field profile has a known analytical expression (typically, paraxial Gaussian beams). However, if the field profile is known at some other plane, but not at the boundary (typically, non-paraxial beams), some pre-processing is needed to calculate the field profile after propagation back to the boundary. We present a parallel numerical technique for this propagation between an arbitrary tilted plane and a given boundary of the simulation domain, implemented in the Maxwell-Vlasov particle-in-cell code Smilei.